Rio Carnaval

Since I´ve been having some trouble getting photos uploaded to blogger, I´ve put some Rio Carnaval pictures on Kodak Gallery. Hopefully this link works. If you´re wondering why the trash collector is on there, he was the one with the samba rhythm who was dancing in the streets as he cleaned up after the parades. Quite entertaining. There are some pics from a costume show we went to, the Sambodromo parade grounds, us at Sugarloaf mountain, and Christ the Redeemer statue.

Link to Kodak Gallery

We´re about to head off for our 11 day cruise to Antarctica, so we´ll be offline during that time.

Easter Island pics

Finally, I´ve had a chance to upload some of my Easter Island pics. Here are just a few of the couple hundred I took on the island.

The first couple of pictures are from the quarry where they carved all of the statues and then transported them around the island (although no one is really sure how they transported them). At the quarry, the statues are in various states of completion, including fully finished ones to ones that were just being started and were still attached to the quarry wall. In a way, it´s sort of like a statue graveyard. This is by far the coolest place on the island.







Karen trying to decide which one is her favorite.



Karen´s got a secret to share!



This last one is still attached to the stone wall at the quarry and is unfinished but nearing completion when work was abandoned.



The following pictures are from Tongariki, which is the site with the largest number of re-erected statues, fifteen. These were re-erected by a Japanese crane company in the 1990s. Every single statue on the island was toppled, so only a few have been re-erected, all from the 1950s onwards.





The following are from the beach at Anakena. You´ll notice that these are wearing the topknots (pukao), which is made out of red scoria. These were separately carved and added to the tops of most of the statues. But when the statues toppled, all of them fell off and most of them broke, so very few of them have them now. You´ll see that only 1 of the 15 statues at Tongariki above has one.





This last picture is of the first statue re-erected on the island, by Thor Heyerdahl. He was a Norwegian explorer who was convinced that Easter Island was settled from the South American mainland. Now that he´s dead, everybody is free to deride this theory as laughable. It is now (almost) universally accepted that Easter Island was settled by Polynesians (probably from the Marquesas Islands) coming from the west).

Tricked again

Well in Australia we got hit with the cloned credit card. Here in Argentina, we got hit with a counterfeit bill. We went to pay for our hotel this morning in cash and the lady wasn´t too happy with one of the 50 peso notes we gave her. We could immediately see why - it was a terrible photocopy of a note. It was in color, but it had a border and was blurry and everything. Man, were we mad. 50 pesos is worth a little over $16. In the grand scheme of things, it´s not too much, but that´s still a meal here.

Speaking of meals, Buenos Aires is pretty cheap. All of our meals have been 40-50 pesos ($13-$17) for 2 people and that usually includes a drink (even a glass of wine) and a dessert. Not bad.

The key thing to look out for in BA (besides counterfeit notes)? ACD - air conditioner drippings. Every time you walk around the city it feels like there´s a light sprinkle in the air. Besides that, we like BA a lot. It feels very European. We´re only here for 3 days this time but we´re coming back in a month for a week or so. It has a much different feel than Rio. Rio felt like one big beach town, with all the girls in bikini tops and all the guys with no shirts, even on the metro and anywhere else. In BA, most people are fairly well dressed, with the guys wearing long pants and collared shirts. The other day we tried to see the movie ¨The Queen¨ but it was sold out. But the line to get in looked like they were going to see the Queen herself. Very well dressed to go see a movie. My shorts and sandals look didn´t really fit the mold.

Still waiting for a good opportunity to upload photos

Apologies yet again for the lack of photos. I really wanted to upload some of my Easter Island and Rio masterpieces, but I keep getting stymied. Either the computer is too slow or the place doesn´t have broadband or the computer doesn´t have a USB port accessible. Right now I´m in a place that has decent computers, decent internet speed and a USB port. The problem? The computer is running Windows Millenium!! so it doesn´t recognize my camera. Oh well.

So, instead you get to be regaled with some more text-only entries.

First up, our Buenos Aires cabbie. When we arrived in Buenos Aires, it was after 11 pm and the airport is about 40 kms from the city center. We thought we got into a meter taxi but after we started going, the cabbie said that they don´t do meters from the airport, only fixed price. We thought ´great, now we´re gonna get ripped off´. But he told us the price was only 60 pesos, less than US$20, so that was alright. He also told me in Spanish that he never rips people off. He even gave us a mini-tour of BA as we drove to the hotel.

When we got to the hotel, I only had 50 and 100 peso notes from the ATM at the airport. The cabbie didn´t have change and was a bit bummed I didn´t have a 10 peso note. I offered to go into the hotel and get change but the cabbie did something that I never thought possible - he told me that 50 peso was alright! He willingly lowered his fixed price from 60 peso to 50 peso. It might not seem like much, but it´s a lot for a BA cabbie. I have never had a cabbie lower a fixed price. We´ve had plenty who suddenly raise their fixed price when we reach our destination with excuses like ´more traffic than expected´, ´longer time than expected´, ´you have too many bags´, ´I took you further into town than agreed´, etc. etc., but for a cabbie to accept a lower price simply boggled me.

This would be the equivalent of showing up at JFK or Heathrow and agreeing a price of $60 or 60 pounds to get into town and then only having 50s and 100s to pay with and the cabbie accepting 50 rather than 60. It simply would never, never, never happen.

And finally, (for this post at least), one of the more interesting things we learned on our tour of the favelas (slums) in Rio was about the 1988 mayoral election there. People in Brazil are forced to vote in every election or face a fine. In 1988 they were a bit disillusioned with the political options and there was a write-in campaign launched. The candidate? Tiao, or Big Uncle in Portuguese. Who´s Tiao? Oh, he was the favorite chimpanzee at the Rio Zoo. Tiao finished in third place out of 12 candidates ... with over 400,000 votes!!! Do you feel bad for the 9 humans who finished behind a lower primate? Nowadays, the authorities are keen to prevent a repeat of that debacle and all voting is now electronic and all candidates have to be formally put up for office. People vote with the official candidates´ names and pictures appearing on their screen (so even the illiterate people can vote by the pictures). I think Tiao would have made a great mayor.

Language difficulties

After a few days in Rio, we have now moved on to Buenos Aires before heading down south and onto Antarctica. It´s nice to be back in a Spanish speaking country, as I must say I find Portuguese to be one of the most frustrating languages. Why? Because understanding it seems so close yet so far away. It´s extremely similar to Spanish in grammar, vocab, etc. I can read about 70% of the stuff I see in Portuguese, but my aural comprehesion of the language is only around 5%. At least when we were in places like India or Thailand I knew that I was never going to understand the language, either written or spoken. But to have a language that´s so accessible in the written form yet so inaccessible in the spoken form is extremely frustrating. I knew Portuguese (especially the Brazilian version which is even trickier than the European version) was going to be difficult after watching movies like Central Station and City of God (both great movies, by the way) and understanding about 5 words each movie. I was hoping, though, that after a few days immersed in the place I would pick up a bit more, but so far it seems to be a lost cause. We´ll be heading back to Brazil again in about a month so I can try again then.

Fortunately the Treaty of Tordesillas (high school history paying off finally) gave most of the good stuff in South America to Spain so we´ll be spending most of our 4 months in South America in Spanish speaking rather than Portuguese speaking countries.

Some other linguistically derived entertainment came in Tahiti, aka French Polynesia. We were at a pub where Karen wanted more water to drink. I told her to ask the bar staff for ´plus d´eau´ (plu doh) so Karen did so. She came back to the table and said the bar staff didn´t understand what she wanted (native Francophones never seem to understand anything foreigners say in French) so she just asked in English. I asked her what she asked for and she told me she said what I said, ´plus dur´. Well, that explained why the bar staff didn´t understand what she wanted. Fortunately Karen asked a female bar staff for her request, because it could have been a bit more awkward if she had said ´plus dur´ to a male - ´plus dur´ meaning ´harder´ in French.

And speaking of French bar staff, you have to be careful when thanking females in French, as ´merci beaucoup´ (´many thanks´) sounds very much like, ´merci, beau cul´ (i.e., ´thanks, nice bum´) when prouncounced by an Anglophone. A colleague of mine once found that out the hard way.

Carnaval in Rio de Janeiro

Copacabana beach where the crowds have some fun in the sun (though it was way too hot for us to think about sitting outside)

So we´re finally here in Rio and though we imagined it would be wild, it´s actually been a very manageable kind of craziness. Except for one small incident where two guys tried to pickpocket Kevin, we have felt really safe. Luckily, we´ve heard so much about robbery in There are loads of police out and though there has been a lot of alcohol, I haven´t seen any really loutish behaviour! Our hotel is located very near the Sambadrome and last night we got to see the Samba parade in the stadium (which is itself an impressive site. It was such an amazing experience to see these Samba schools competing. They pull out all the stops--6 or 7 giant floats and about 2,500-4,500 dancers, drummers, and singers (per school) making their way down the gigantic Sambadrome. It´s such a joyful event with audience members singing along, dancing and laughing continuously. We joined in lots of the fun, but it took a lot for us to stay awake till 6 am which was when the competition ended. The creativity and planning required for these parades is extensive. We were so impressed.



In back of us on a giant ledge is the place where all the reporters and journalists stand. We were in an open seating area, though many tourists left by about 1 am so our seats kept getting better and better.



One of the many imaginative floats. This one seems to have a brain on it!

Easter Island Wonders

The ATV we´ve been talking about with the giant quarry behind Kevin (where the statues were made).



More pictures from the quarry...

Mystical and Magical Easter Island

Kevin and I agree that Easter Island ranks up there as one of the most amazing places we´ve ever been...on par with Egypt but way more mysterious. We could go on and on about the place--its rugged terrain, the mixture of Polynesian and European looking people who have lived there for many generations, and those very mysterious Moai that have impenetrable stares. The Moai are the monoliths that Easter Island is known for--and no picture can really grasp how amazing a sight they are to behold in the flesh.

As Kevin said earlier, we were left stranded on Valentine´s and had to drive in an extremely bouncy and super fun ATV (like a small offroading moped-like vehicle). Since very few tourists get to Easter Island (the airport gets about 1 flight a day from either Tahiti or Chile), you can wander around the island and feel like you are all alone--just you and the Moai.

A little bit about the mystery of the Moai. It´s pretty much been established that they were created by powerful families who lived on Easter Island around 1000 years ago and then mysteriously toppled between the 16th-17th centuries. What lead the people who have venerated these statues for so many generations to suddenly topple them? Was it a force of nature like a tsunami? Or was it toppled by man?

A few Moais have been reerected and our pix show some of those. But it is good to see the fallen Moai too, humbled statues, toppled giants.









This is the quarry where most of the Moai were made. I am standing next to some uncompleted statues (mostly heads).





Many of the Moai once had these red hat-like objects on their heads. They are actually meant to be top-knots, replicating the way men wore their hair at the time.

Country Mouse, City Mouse

Overall I think Karen´s eye surgery in the Philippines went well. However, there were a couple times in New Zealand when I started to doubt the results. Granted, there are tons and tons of sheep in NZ, but I think sometimes Karen got a bit carried away. For example, the following true dialogues.

Conversation #1:

Karen - Wow, look at how big those sheep are!
Kevin - Those are light skinned cows.
Karen - Oh.

Conversation #2:

Karen - Wow, look how tall those sheep are!
Kevin - That´s an alpaca farm.
Karen - Oh.

These conversations were quite reminiscent of our first trip to Scotland, where Karen was convinced they had purple and green horses ... until I explained to her that they were cloth coverings to keep the horses warm in the Scottish cold.

I guess we can conclude that Karen is more of a ¨city mouse¨ type rather than a ¨country mouse¨.

Carnival and Easter Island recap

We have now arrived in Rio (strangely pronounced Hio by the Brazilians) de Janeiro for Carnival. It´s a bit strange to be in a big city after a while on some small little islands.

We have just come in from Easter Island. Karen and I agree that it is definitely one of the coolest places we have ever been. I´m sure you´ve seen pictures before, but they really don´t do the place justice. It really has to be seen to be believed. Between us I think we have over 300 pictures of the place to sort through - from just a 3 day visit! We´ll try to post some of those soon.

By the way, we got stood up on Valentine´s Day! On our first day on the island we took a half day tour which was good. We told the tour guide to sign us up for the full day tour for the 14th. So at the appointed time, we waited and waited to be picked up from our hotel. When we called, they said they were on their way. Then 5 minutes later they called to tell us they had no seats left. Grrr...

Well, unfortunately all of the cars on the island were rented out (or so our hotel host told us) so what were we to do? We had to cover about 50 kms of the island in order to see what we wanted and since only 1/3 of the island is paved, biking didn´t seem like a good option and some of the horses we saw looked a bit wild. Across the road from our hotel was a place renting out ATVs. Although neither Karen or I had ever been on one before, let alone driven one and the fact that it had gears and we only drive automatic, we decided to go for it.

After about 10 minutes of training (in Spanish), we were on our way. It turned out to be a blessing in disguise because we saw what we wanted to see, got to spend lots more time at the sites we liked, and we both got to drive the ATV which was really fun. Plus we saved ourselves some money as the ATV was half the price of the tour we wanted. In New Zealand they were charging about US$50-$70 per person to try an ATV offroading for an hour or two. On Easter Island we got the ATV for US$50 for the whole day and we actually got to use it for practical purposes. Plus we got to go on the dirt roads on the island and do offroading anyway.

[The following paragraph is not to be read by any of our parents]

The funniest part of renting an ATV was the warning sticker on the ATV that noted:
- always wear a helmet (oops, they forgot to give those to us; actually, they didn´t have any to give us)
- never drive the ATV on public roads (I guess that doesn´t really apply on remote islands with only 3,000 people on it)
- never carry a passenger as it inhibits control (well, it was better than renting two of the things)

Anyway, the ATV was a great experience and was quite practical and allowed us to see everything we wanted. It worked out much better than taking a tour. Plus we sort of got the hang of this whole manual shift thing, I think. Although the ATV did keep stalling towards the end of the day, so I hope we didn´t wreck the gearbox or anything.

And let me reiterate - Easter Island is one of the coolest places on the planet. Book your trips now!

More crazy vids

Thanks again to my brother Brian for uploading our skydiving video for us. Now we have FOUR more videos to amuse/entertain/shock/bore you with.

You see, Queenstown on the South Island of New Zealand is essentially the extreme sport capital of the world and it is most definitely the home to bungy jumping, with the activity being invented by some crazy Kiwis back in the 1980s. So really, you can't leave New Zealand without going to Queenstown and you can't leave Queenstown without doing a bungy. Otherwise the immigration officials won't let you out of the country.

There are a few different bungy places to choose from, with the heights varying from 43 meters to 134 meters (the highest in New Zealand). Karen wanted to do the biggest and the baddest of them all, the Nevis bungy which is the 134 meter one. I originally wanted to do something a bit more sedate, either the 43 or the 47 meter one. At first, I vehemently declared that there was NO WAY I was going to do the mega one. But then we went to sign up and Karen signed up for the big one while I was non-committal. But it was going to cost me a bit of money to travel to watch Karen anyway, as the bungy was a way out of town and on private land, so they charge for you to come watch. We both signed up to do the 40-something meter Sky Swing, which was at the top of the hill in town.

The next day, we took the gondola ride up to the top of the hill and were the first Sky Swingers of the day. The Sky Swing entails lowering you out above a precipice with you strapped in a harness. And then you have to pull the ripcord to let yourself go and then you swing on ropes that are 40+ meters long. It's actually not too scary, but it's pretty fun.

Right near the Sky Swing was the 47 meter bungy. We stayed to watch a few jumpers go. The first two girls backed out (and forfeited their money), while the third person finally went. But frankly, that bungy was rather lame and the guy who went was slightly disappointed with it, as it only gives you less than 2 seconds of freefall. Seeing these jumpers gave me mixed feelings - if the first two people we watched backed out at 47 meters, how in the world could we do 134 meters; but also, if the 2 second freefall looked lame, there was really only one choice to do - the 134 meter bungy.

In the afternoon we were picked up in town and driven 40 minutes out to the mega bungy site. At this point I was still officially a spectator. But even the spectators got to take the rather scary cable car ride to the bungy platform anchored by wires high above a gorge.

One of the good things about adding a few extra holiday pounds was that I was the second heaviest person in the group. Since this bungy went according to weight, I was all of the sudden the second person called. Well, it was decision time and the decision was to go for it. Strangely, I was rather calm about the whole thing. I got strapped in and off I went!

Doing the big bungy was definitely a better choice. You get between 6-8 seconds of freefall and actually get to experience something. Plus, as long as you don't look down, I think it takes the same psychological trigger either way to jump off a ledge, whether it's 40-something meters or 134 meters.

Poor Karen, though, was the second lightest in the group and had to wait for about 15 people to go ahead of her before she could jump. I was quite happy that I was all over and done with. I did get to stay out in the platform for over an hour after my jump waiting for Karen to do her jump as well. Karen did one of the more gracious jumps off the platform, as you'll see from the video.

Oh, and since we did the bungy on Groundhog Day and both Karen and I saw our shadow coming ever closer to us at the bottom of the gorge, I think that means we get another 6 weeks of Southern Hemisphere summer or something like that.

If you want to experience the same thing, just go to the local 44 story building in your neighborhood, climb up to the roof, tie a piece of latex rubber to your ankles, clamber towards the ledge, look down, and jump! Enjoy.

The four videos:

Kevin's Sky Swing

Karen's Sky Swing

Kevin's Bungy

Karen's Bungy

Aotearoa

As a break from reporting on our adventures, I thought I'd place an educational interlude in. I hope you don't mind!

You're probably aware that the natives of New Zealand are the Maoris. The Maoris are a Polynesian people and the Maori name for NZ is Aotearoa. NZ is the southwest corner of what is called the Polynesian Triangle, which is all of the lands founded and settled by the Polynesians over many centuries.





If you look at the two pictures you can see that the area includes thousands of kilometers of open ocean. It still boggles the mind how Polynesian sailors covered these vast distances without even knowing what they would find after their long journeys.

But the main thing that fascinates me is that, of all these tiny islands spread all across the Pacific, New Zealand was the LAST part to be discovered. This amazes me for two big reasons: first, NZ is clearly the biggest island(s) in the area (I'm not certain, but I would venture that it's bigger than all the rest of the Polynesian islands put together); second, it's actually relatively close to where the Polynesians began their migrations thousands of years ago.

To think that the Polynesians went and discovered the Hawaiian Islands and, even more amazingly, Easter Island (Rapa Nui) hundreds of years before they discovered NZ is astonishing. NZ wasn't discovered until between 800 and 1100 AD, so it's only been populated for around a thousand years. Also bear in mind that Easter Island is the MOST remote place on the planet, with nothing around it for over 1,500 miles in every direction.

After New Zealand, we are heading back to Tahiti, where we went for honeymoon in 2004. After that it's onto Easter Island. To get to these places, we have to take flights that last 4-6 hours each from NZ to Tahiti to Easter Island to Chile. And to think that these intrepid Polynesian explorers covered all this sea in open boats centuries ago is truly impressive.

License Plates

Probably not the most exciting topic, but I have to say that New Zealand probably has the most boring license plates on the planet - black lettering on a white background. With no images, words, or anything. Judging from this picture, it looks like the Kiwis have never been inspired to decorate their plates.



Granted, New Zealand has a unitary licensing authority for both islands, and it's pretty difficult to bring a foreign registered car to these remote islands, but you'd think they could have decorated the plates a bit. There's a few good choices, like a cool Maori design:



A kiwi bird:



Or the classic silver fern logo:



For comparison purposes, Massachusetts alone has more than FIFTEEN different plate designs to choose from.

Usually I'm against most vanity plates, but with these boring NZ plates, you have to spice them up a bit. We recently visited Mt. Cook, the tallest mountain in Australasia. The owner of one of the restaurants there managed to snag three different vanity plates: MT C00K, MT CO0K, and MT C0OK. We didn't see the MT COOK one, though. He must really love the place, though.

Milford Sound & Mount Cook

Milford Sound is the place of dreams. It is seriously ethereal and hopefully some of these photos capture how it appeared to us. When we arrive, it was pouring and water was gushing everywhere; yet, it was more beautiful that way then in the sunlight when the mountains' waterfalls had receded. There are numerous walks around, but you can also take a short cruise around the sound which rewards you with even more amazing views and some lazy seals!





We made our way to Queenstown which is a great town albeit very touristy. It reminded us of other cute skiing towns like Zermatt in Switzerland. Then we made our way to Mount Cook, the highest mountain in Australasia with a beautiful conical peak. Kevin just informed me that it was used as "Mt Fuji" for the filming of "The Last Samurai" but I don't actually think they look that similar! On our way to Mt Cook, there was the most amazingly coloured lake (due to glaciers rubbing against the floor leaving a sediment residue that colours the water in this way).

The Bug

So how have we been getting around New Zealand's South Island? Well, on North Island we rented a car and stayed at lovely B&Bs. But for South Island, we thought we'd try using camper vans since we'd heard it was a great way to see more remote parts of the island and to have the "freedom to sleep around", which is how the slogan of our rental company goes. That said, Kevin has noticed that I get a great deal of camper envy in the parks. You see, our little bug just consists of a bed and a sink. At night, we roll out the cushions which creates the bed. But there are loads of campers with all the trimmings and some that are the same size of ours but with loads more headroom. Anyway, that said, we've grown rather attached to our Bug which you can see by the pictures is painted with an assortment of insects. When we drive down the streets, little kids point and get really excited. I didn't realise our camper would be so much an eyesore, but we definitely can pick it out amongst all the many camper vans that park at the sites. Luckily, since it's the size of a Hi-Ace van or an 10 person people carrier, it's rather easy to drive.

We Came, We Saw, We Bungied

Bungy--the last frontier of sending yourself down long distances with just a wing and a prayer. These photos are to supplement the videos that we hope to upload. We bungied Nevis, 134 meter gorge near Queenstown. Kevin wasn't sure he was going to jump (he was going to do a 40 meter bridge bungy) so he signed on as a spectator, but as you can see he did it and with a pretty graceful dive as well! Nevis is the highest bungy you can do in NZ, and one of the highest in the world. In case you're interested, the highest one, Bloukranz, is in South Africa. We've been debating which one was scarier, Skydiving or this...and we agree that it's such a different kind of fear factor that it's really a toss up. Both are scary, both are exhilarating, and both are awesome while they last (and maybe that's why skydiving slightly won out for me...coz it lasted longer and the views were soooo amazing). But for the fear factor, well, in the skydive someone else threw you out of the plane...Bungy requires the seemingly crazy notion of throwing yourself off a narrow ledge and into a deep abyss. So here are the pix--but the video is a better way to experience the jumps.